One night in January, John Hunt from Mount George, west of Wingham went outside to bring his dogs in. He happened to look up and spotted something unusual moving in the night sky above him.
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He saw an orange ball overhead "floating through the sky".
"I thought 'oh, there's Mars'. And then I thought it's not Mars, it's about five times brighter. It's five times bigger and it's not in the right spot in the sky to be Mars. And then it was moving," John said.
"It went over our house to the south west. And it wasn't an aeroplane. It wasn't a drone, it wasn't a balloon, it wasn't a satellite or a rocket. It's not a satellite coming down. It's not meteors, it's not a helicopter. It's not a Chinese lantern.
"I'm a pilot, I know what things look like.
"This thing just went south west, which is the opposite direction to satellites anyway, but it went to the horizon and blinked in and out a couple of times and then disappeared."
John whipped out his phone to take photos and video of the strange sighting.
John then posted the pictures and video to the Australian UFO Sightings - AUFOS Facebook group, only to find people reporting seeing similar things around the country.
"It seems that people have seen it in Forster. They've seen it in Kempsey and Nambucca Heads, Port Pirie, Cairns... it's all over the place. It's the same description," John said.
With a membership of 38,000 in the Facebook group, nobody was able to say what the object was.
One person from Wingham, however, commented that John might have seen the malfunctioning Peregrine moon lander making an uncontrolled re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.
Then, two weeks later on January 24 at 11.30pm, John reported again seeing another orange ball in the sky.
"It tracked from east to west then stopped and hovered for over a minute. Then (it) slowly moved off in a south westerly direction and disappeared."
Expert weighs in
The Great Lakes Advocate sent the photos, video and John's description of the sightings to astronomer Paul Curnow, to see if he could shed light on what the object was.
Mr Curnow, an astronomy lecturer at the Adelaide Planetarium and a southern sky specialist, wasn't able to definitively say what the object was.
"It's very poor video and photos, and most of the time is out of focus. The camera is shaking so it's hard to accurately determine the movement," Mr Curnow said.
"It's low on the horizon, so I would guess it most looks like a distant plane, helicopter, or (there is) a remote possibility that it's a drone. However, it could also be a satellite with all the shaking."
Mr Curnow was, however, able to explain the object's colouring.
"It is being reddened because they are looking through a denser part of the atmosphere as it appears low. Dust in the atmosphere will redden it even more," he said.
Whatever the object is, John remains mystified.
"What fascinates me is I've never really known about orange balls before flying through the sky, and other people seeing them all over the country," he said.